HEADLINES [click on headline to view story]:

Pedestrians need a more peaceful and safe existence

Belgian tourist won’t come back

Vote buying

Please stop moaning

Pattaya friendly to who?

This Year We Pray

Pedestrians need a more peaceful and safe existence

Editor;
It does seem that pedestrians have gone out of style. There is no convenience for them, or safety. A constant stream of cars, baht buses, trucks and motorbikes make it almost impossible to cross the street. There are no stop signs, traffic signals, or speed limits. On crossing the road one could become a basket case or an amputee. I’ve even had a motorbike up my rear. The so called zebra stripes are absolutely useless. Surely there must be a way to thin out traffic in such a way that pedestrians can have a more peaceful and safe existence. Traffic citations could clean out some of the drivers, but police seem to be interested in offering citations to those without helmets.
The sidewalks are almost as bad as the roads. Some sidewalks are high and some low. Some are narrow and non-existent (Soi 5); one runs a gauntlet on walking down the street. One is accosted by tailors, masseurs, greasy kitchens and holes that haven’t been filled for months. The motto must be that if you have it lying around, place it on the sidewalk so people can wander around it. No inclines are provided at street corners for baby buggies and wheel chairs. Older people must wait for assistance to cross the streets.
I like the robust nature of Pattaya and wonder about the existence of a city traffic manager. Surely, things could be better. I’m not even satisfied with “Walking Street” as a place to stretch my legs.
Ray Standiford

Belgian tourist won’t come back

Editor – Sir,
First off, I’m a tourist. A Belgian tourist. The kind of fairly wealthy tourist that you or someone at the TAT wants to lure to Thailand.
Only – we don’t want to come here! Not a second time, anyway. Or else someone wealthy (I have 3 apartment houses in Brussels) has a very readily available, various nightlife. This is your niche! Here you are since a good many years leading the world, but with 2-3 countries in Asia hard on your trail. This has given Pattaya the tremendous uplift it has experienced over the last 25 years. With it the die-hards that come back after receiving old age pensions to relive youth again – and in the effect, spend all their pension on/in Pattaya.
Those mentioned have made Pattaya what it is today. They have made Pattaya big and wealthy. They have given a livelihood to many Thais who came to this place to earn the rice for their families.
Are you grateful to the old ‘farangs’ who build Pattaya? You are not. You are abusing them! You want to replace them with a better class of ‘farang’. If possible, kick them out or make life so unpleasant for them that they’ll go alone, leaving the families they supported for many years in poverty.
You let them built palaces for the very rich and cultured. The pressure is on you now to fill these 5-6 star hotels. The ‘old hands’ built houses for their newly won families. Their ‘darlings’ and their respective children, nephews, parents, etc. (usually not in the name or benefits of the money-giver. That was forbidden! How clever!).
Now the pressure is on you to help fill the glitzy hotels. But what do you have to offer in return for the money they (tourists) will leave here? Very little! I’d say almost nothing. I went to take a good look at Pattaya, the good and the ugly. 90% of what I saw here was on the ugly side. Only a few things that one does not find in Florida or Hawaii (my favored places to holiday). No public transport in the city. The fear to be robbed or shot down by youngsters. Traffic in a condition that I would not dare to hire a car and drive it. Big and deep and un-masked hotels in the main streets. The miserable tap-water quality. The filth in the markets where restaurants get their kitchen supply. Police who seem to stop almost only foreigners for a true or dreamed up violation (and take cash on the spot without receipt!). Almost no footpaths for the tourists to walk on. (Am I spoiled here ‘cause in Florida they are 6-8 m. wide, as indeed in most countries in Europe.) Hospitals that will not take an injured person if there are doubts he/she has money to spare for the saving of his life. The racialism when something will cost 100 baht for native, but 500 baht FOR a non-Thai (and seemingly official!). No culture to offer the educated (does anyone here know who Joh. Sebastian Bach was?). The katoey ‘gehopse’ at the one theatre in Pattaya is not culture!
You want the rich and educated to come and bring money to you. Better stick the ones (and pamper them a little!) that made Pattaya big and wealthy, gave bread to many families, not to mention the ‘influential clique’ who got very rich on the (up to now) tourists.
Because – I and other rich will only come once, then turn away in horror.
Henry,
The Belgian who will never come here again

Vote buying

Editor,
In numerous letters I have defended the Thai people against what I saw as self-superior attacks by farang. I have also defended other farang similarly. However, I take issue with one person I once sided with, who suggested in a recent letter that maybe we have something to learn from the Thai vote-buying/selling mentality. I think maybe sometimes he can’t see the wood for the trees. Self-interest is an inclination of ‘the masses’ and it is rising above it that distinguishes a person, not going with the flow. Latter requires merely the basest of instinct, whereas going against the flow requires independent spirit.
What I did agree with in the letter, was the pointing to of much of the media’s shirking of its responsibility. This, however, is just another example of self-interest. History shows that when the masses become an economic force, arrogance becomes the norm and social standards fall. Commercial interests require news to be entertaining and people in the so-called ‘developed’ world don’t want their breakfast appetite spoilt by hearing that innocents were bombed to pulp overnight. That’s why such terms as ‘collateral damage’ are coined. I also agree that politicians are a very dubious breed, it well exemplified by those elected over the last decade. Tony Blair was this week described as one of Britain’s most successful, yet when giving his farewell speeches he said of the Iraq debacle: “I did what I thought was right.” He seems to have conveniently forgotten that Hitler and every other despot did what they thought was right, and Blair and allied-to Bush are in the minds of many people even in their own nations no different.
Whereas democracy is a far from perfect system of government and its faults are easy to point to, no one has come up with a better one. It wasn’t derided by only Ben Franklin and Mark Twain. Doing it much more succinctly than these two: “A hundred empty heads do not make one wise man,” said Hitler. How right he was, but democracy tends to put reins on absolute power and attendant absolute corruption (it recently defeated Hugo Chavez in Venezuela). Certainly there is nothing auspicious to be learned from selling votes for the best price going. Indeed, my own view is that apparent widespread willingness to do it in Thailand is the best example I’ve yet seen of a mentality that makes the country’s prevalence of a certain commerce world famous (or notorious). If I’d had ‘insanely practical’ Thai relatives who considered selling their vote, I would have pointed out to them that whether it is use of one’s body or vote one sells, the word in English that is defined as ‘to sell for base gain’ is ‘prostitution’.
Tony Crossley

Please stop moaning

Dear Sirs,
I am writing with regard to all the moaning letters in the Pattaya Mail. I am a 52-year-old retired male, married (farang wife), who has been visiting Thailand for more than 15 years. We have seen Pattaya grow over the past 10 years with some very nice attractions, places to see and lovely golf courses.
I find it quite amazing that so many people have so much to moan about. Thailand is a beautiful country with some very nice people, and I do appreciate that there are some devious people, too.
But come on please! It is their country - we should have little to say about how the Thais run their country. I have never heard so much rubbish spoken and written, and people bickering in a newspaper. If you don’t like it go home. If you don’t like being called a farang (white Caucasian) go home. You don’t like the baht buses who as far as I’m concerned are doing a great job under very difficult circumstance, i.e., rising price of fuel, lack of punters and the usual 2 bob mob who want to travel half way round Pattaya for 10 baht (15 pence) … deary me, have you all forgotten how much a bus or taxi is in the UK? Standing about in all weathers waiting for a cab, and then the extortionate price you have to pay to travel the shortest of distances? You don’t like it, go home and moan.
I really don’t understand why you bother to come here in the first place. Is it because all your friends back home are fed up with hearing you moan, or can you not find anything better to do? Why don’t you try making a difference, something constructive, like helping your neighbour Thai or farang?
Just please stop moaning, life is to good and way to short.
Colin Farrang

Pattaya friendly to who?

Editor;
I read your Mailbag every week and I wish to write and support the comments of Mr B, Mr A and Steve from Sydney. I also visit and have two small children. It is nearly impossible to use a push chair in Pattaya. Second Road is bad but Beach Road is a no go area.
If Pattaya wants families to visit they need to get the basics right: useable walkways, ramps to shops and restaurants, clear the walkways, put crossings with lights, and make Beach Road traffic free till midnight, or all the time.
We love the place but it’s getting worse for families, not better. So Mr and Mrs Mayor, get out you pushchair and your children and try to walk on the footpaths (sidewalks) and cross the road at anytime of day with children and see what it is like.
Bob,
Mukdahan

This Year We Pray

By B. Phillip Webb Jr.

This Tuesday, by the grace of God
We start another year
We hope the weather will be calm
And all the heavens clear

We pray for peace and happiness
And progress on this earth
With opportunity to prove
Our individual worth

May there be fewer tragedies
A smaller traffic toll
And capture every criminal
Who sells his wicked soul

May there be love and brotherhood
And boundless charity
For all the peoples of the world
And every family

We pray to God for food and drink
For guidance and for grace
And for salvation in the end
For all the human race.

Letters published in the Mailbag of Pattaya Mail
are also published here.